Former Ukip MEP Ashley Mote has been found guilty of fraudulently claiming almost £500,000 in European Parliament expenses. Mote, 79, was convicted at Southwark Crown Court of 12 fraud-related offences and of using the gains to fund his court battles in the UK (see 15.50).

Tristram Hunt continues to tease over his plans to run for Labour leadership, resisting the opportunity to launch a bid in the wake of potential rival Chuka Umunna’s withdrawal from the race. Hunt said he was “continuing to listen to colleagues” as he weighed up whether to compete in the contest. The remarks echo his comments on last night’s Question Time, when he admitted he was “interested” in the leadership (see 15.28).

Nigel Farage has challenged an anonymous senior Ukip figure, who has been quoted as wanting to oust him as leader, to quit the party if he cannot be more supportive.

The remarks prompted speculation that he is talking about Douglas Carswell, Ukip’s only MP, who has disagreed with Farage over issues such as preventing foreigners with HIV from migrating to the UK and whether to accept £3.25m in public funding for the party’s parliamentary office.

Ex-Ukip MEP guilty of expenses fraud

This seems like an apt time to return to Ukip’s mounting woes - former Ukip MEP Ashley Mote has been found guilty of fraudulently claiming almost £500,000 in European Parliament expenses.

Mote, 79, was convicted at Southwark Crown Court of 12 fraud-related offences and of using the gains to fund his court battles in the UK.

Mote, of Binsted, Hampshire, was found guilty of four counts of obtaining a money transfer by deception, three of false accounting, two of fraud, and one each of acquiring criminal property, concealing criminal property and theft. The offences took place between November 2004 and July 2010.

Guardian columnist Owen Jones has given his fierce take on reports that Chuka Umunna stepped down from the Labour leadership race due to overbearing media scrutiny. He writes:

Chuka should have expected it and learned to take it, some will say. It’s all part of the territory. If you don’t want that level of intense scrutiny, choose a different path in life. You saw what they did to Ed Miliband, did you not? What a bleak approach, that the price of political service should be having your life and the lives of those who love you torn to shreds. A mean, cruel, macho, debased political “debate”, stripped of humanity or understanding.

Tristram Hunt undecided over leadership bid

Tristram Hunt continues to tease over his plans to run for Labour leadership, resisting the opportunity to launch a bid in the wake of potential rival Chuka Umunna’s withdrawal from the race.

Hunt said he was “continuing to listen to colleagues” as he weighed up whether to compete in the contest. The remarks echo his comments on last night’s Question Time, when he admitted he was “interested” in the leadership.

He will tomorrow join the four declared candidates at a high-profile debate at the annual conference of the Blairite think-tank Progress.

Addressing his local party in Stoke-on-Trent this evening, he will say:

As today marks the official beginning of the contest, I am continuing to listen to colleagues in the Parliamentary Labour Party on their views on how we rebuild the Labour Party to get us back into government.

I will tomorrow join leadership contenders at Progress’s Annual Conference to set out my analysis on how we begin to understand what went so wrong and why.

Communication Workers Union calls for Jim Murphy to resign

Unite, Unison, Aslef and now the Communication Workers Union (CWU) are all leaning on Murphy to go.

A CWU spokesman said:

CWU is calling for the resignation of Jim Murphy as Scottish Labour leader following the Party’s performance in the general election, which was particularly disastrous in Scotland.

It is clear that the Labour Party needs to rebuild in Scotland and CWU believes that will be done most effectively under new leadership.”

CWU is affiliated to the Labour Party and represents workers in post, telecoms, mobile, and financial services companies including BT, Capita, EE, O2, Parcelforce, the Post Office, Royal Mail, Santander and UK Mail.

He, surprisingly, fixes some of the blame on the establishment of the Better Together campaign, which aligned Labour with the Tories - a party Labour had spent “the previous 30 years successfully demonising as the enemy of the Scottish people”.

Saying we were Better Together meant bugger all to someone who was unemployed or in a low paid, zero hours contract. It meant nothing to communities hurting from the impact of austerity imposed upon them by the very Tories Labour campaigned alongside, and it meant nothing to young people who wanted a message of hope for the future.

Findlay said Labour’s manifesto was actually more to the left than the SNP and, according to the Institute for Fiscal Studies, the nationalists’ budget proposals would mean longer austerity.

But none of this mattered – people had switched off and refused to listen to anything Labour said. We could have offered a free million pound note to everyone who voted Labour and still this would have been rejected. This is not the fault of the electorate, we can’t blame the SNP – it’s our fault, Labour’s fault. The people lacked faith in our sincerity.

He finishes by calling for Labour to consider creating an “autonomous or federal structure” within the Labour party giving the Scottish party the ability to develop its own policies and select candidates along with a long list of other proposals.

Speaking as he visited Nicola Sturgeon for devolution talks in Edinburgh, the prime minister said he believed Dunlop had been involved in defence procurement when he worked for Thatcher. He said:

What I’ve done is I’ve taken someone who is extremely talented, with a great record in public service, who will make an excellent minister in the Scottish Office.

I read some of this morning’s press with incredulity because my memory is he was responsible for defence procurement under the Margaret Thatcher government, but why let the facts get in the way of a great story?

Waugh says he understands there’s no “big scandal looming in the weekend press” after speaking to a close source and it is the “intensity” of the media interest that has dissuaded Umunna from running. He writes:

As a Shadow minister, Umunna was still used to a relatively relaxed private life. Constituents were surprised that he didn’t have a bodyguard or driver and just went about his business on the bus and tube. All that would change if he became leader.

Umunna’s girlfriend Alice Sullivan accompanied him to the Marr Show last week, leading to a surge of media interest, Waugh writes.

It’s also true that his girlfriend’s elderly grandmother was contacted by the media, though Umunna is not trying to turn his decision into a war with the press or a salutory tale of media ‘intrusion’.

Umunna is definitely not running for London Mayor, Waugh adds, and plans to back one of the other contenders.

Labour leader hopeful Creagh pays tribute to Umunna "courage"

Matthew Weaver

Returning to the shock decision by Chuka Umunna to withdrawal from the Labour leadership race, my colleague Matthew Weaver reports that shadow international development secretary and leadership contender Mary Creagh has paid tribute to the “courage” of the shadow business secretary. He writes:

Speaking on BBC Radio 4’s World at One programme she said: “I can only conclude that he has come to this decision after a lot of soul searching. It takes courage to stand for the leadership. It also takes a great deal of courage to withdraw from the leadership. He’s a big beast, he’s got a huge role to play both in the Labour party and in a future Labour government.”

She added: “Modern politicians with social media, Facebook and emails face pressures even 15 or 20 years ago they did not face ... We are expected to be some how superhuman.”

Creagh, one of four declared contenders for the leadership, said: “One of the lessons of the last general election is that Westminster politicians tend to look and sound the same. I think it is really important for the Labour party that we chose a new leader who can reach out to large swaths of the country that think Labour no longer stands for them.”

Like several candidates and senior figures in the party Creagh blamed Labour’s defeat on a failure to attract “aspirational” voters.

“I think we lost the election because people did not trust us on the economy. People felt that Labour didn’t understand their aspiration to earn money and provide a better life for their family,” she said.

She added: “I don’t think it was about [being] left wing. It was about our rhetoric and the package that we used.”

Creagh was asked repeatedly whether Labour spent too much money in government. She refused to give a direct answer but said: “We have apologised for our failure to adequately regulate the banking sector. But it also clear that when the banking crisis hit, Alistair Darling and Gordon Brown, took the steps to avoid a banking crash and a global recession. Should we have run a small structural deficit prior to that? With hindsight probably not, but I don’t think the global financial crisis happened because we employed more teachers, nurses and doctors.”

Scotland will have massive tax and spending powers - Cameron

The prime minister has said Scotland will be free to “raise more taxes and spend more money” when new Scotland bill is passed.

Following talks with SNP leader Nicola Sturgeon, David Cameron said he was committed to implementing the Smith Commission proposals for Scottish devolution in full.

Speaking on Sky News, Cameron also dismissed reports that a second Scottish independence referendum is likely or being planned and denied he had “stoked nationalism” in the election campaign.

It (the bill) gives massive tax and spending powers to the Scottish parliament, so if Scotland wants to take a different path and for instance raise more taxes and spend more money it will be able to.

Asked about the prospect of a second referendum, the prime minister said:

On the referendum question, it was very decisive, the Scottish people decided to stay in the United Kingdom. Alex Salmond said at the time it was a once in a generation - possibly once in a lifetime opportunity - I agree with that, so I don’t think as Nicola Sturgeon herself has said, this is not on the cards.

Cameron denied he had stoked nationalism during the campaign. He said:

I certainly didn’t do that. I’ve always stood for the United Kingdom, for bringing our countries together. I simply pointed out the danger of having an alliance between one party the SNP who want to break up our country and another party Labour that I believe would bankrupt our party (sic) and that was a powerful and important message.